


Incident in Crime Alley

by RileyC



Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 10:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Crime Alley on Halloween, echoes of the past come back to haunt Batman...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incident in Crime Alley

He has mapped the streets and byways, every alley and hidden niche of Gotham the way another man might have memorized a lover’s face. He knows all of its twists and turnings; its secret places so long forgotten that they don’t appear on any map.  
  
This intimate knowledge has been acquired for many reasons—and one of them is a furtive motive nearly hidden from himself. Such a complete knowledge of the city means, after all, that he will never by chance stumble upon certain areas. Special care was always taken, for instance, to never chance upon one location, a dark and gritty sacred shrine to a night that changed everything.  
  
Those times he cannot avoid this spot, his detailed knowledge of Gotham alerts him in time to brace himself and reinforce his shields. And there is one time every year, all of these years, that he chooses to return to this locale, consecrated in blood, to remember the lives that were lost that night _(everyone believes there were two lives lost; only he—perhaps one other—knows that it was three)_ and renew the oath he swore over their graves.  
  
He has never gone there on this night, on All Hallow’s Eve. He’s not sure how he’s wound up there now. He was in pursuit of Poison Ivy, to get to her warehouse of mutant pumpkins before Gotham was besieged by killer jack-o-lanterns _(“Killer pumpkins,” Jim had said. “Only in Gotham…”)_ He’d lost Pamela somewhere, though—up those stairs, through that window, down this fire escape—and come out…here.   
  
Leaves, sodden from rain, are piled up in drifts. A sudden, sharp breeze brings a fresher supply, dry and crackling as the icy zephyr drops them along the cracked pavement. Dispersed across it, they land in potholes and cluster in piles around Dumpsters. Some land in stagnant puddles that glimmer with a sheen of oil in the feeble lamplight that falls across this alley.   
  
That light only enhances the darkness and makes the shadows murkier. Even its pathetic glow is welcome, though, as an icy mist creeps along the pavement. He doesn’t like that fog. He can glimpse someone, something, moving within it, and searches for an escape route. But the fire escape has vanished and the alley’s become a cul-de-sac of ancient brick that crumbles away as he tries to climb to it.  
  
Tendrils of fog entwine him and he feels their icy dampness even through his suit. He shivers with it; he’s enveloped in it, nothing left in the world but this eldritch miasma and the spectral shapes that move within.   
  
He runs then; runs as if the hounds of hell pursue him with cold fire in their eyes and brimstone on their breath. H runs until his lungs are bursting and it doesn’t matter anyway because he winds up right back at the same spot: a patch of gritty, broken pavement, wet with oil that soaks his gauntlets as he falls to his knees almost on top of it. A nearby streetlamps flares up brighter before it erupts in a shower of broken glass and sparks. In that one brilliant flash of light, however, he sees that it is not oil that stains the pavement. It’s blood. Dark and wet and pooling… All of these years, and it was still wet, still fresh and increasing.  
  
He sinks back on his heels and stares at the blood on his hands and barely notices as the fog begins to clear. It’s the footsteps that capture his attention. The _click click click_ of heels; a firmer step beside it; and still another set, an irregular patter of lighter steps that sped up and then slowed only to perform some eccentric gavotte in the next instant…like an eight-year-old, fresh from an epic of silver screen swashbuckling and imitating the hero’s swordplay with far more enthusiasm than finesse.  
  
The footsteps are closer now and he can almost make out the conversation that passes between them. _Don’t go any further_ , he wants to shout. _Turn back…turn back…_ But they don’t. They reach him and pause and he can’t look up, he won’t. The horror of what he might see tears through him and he curls in on himself, hands pressed over his eyes.  
  
A whisper of voices, too low to make out words, and then a hand touches his shoulder and he hears, “Son.” Just that one word but laden with so much urgency and longing that he finds it impossible to fight the way it calls to him. He raises his head and discovers no horrors staring back at him. There’s only kindness and warmth and a tinge of sorrow that he feels as an ache in his chest, in his throat. It burns his eyes and blurs them so that the figures shimmer as they pass by. He waits for the hollow burst of gunfire but it never comes. Across the way, stopped under another lamp that casts a soft, warm light around them, they look back at him—all but the boy and he’s startled as a small hand latches onto a tall, pointy ear and shakes it.  
  
He looks up into pale blue eyes, so serious, so wise. That small hand taps his chest, unfazed by the armor. “Remember,” the boy tells him.  
  
“Remember?” His voice sounds rusty, like he hasn’t used it in thirty years.  
  
“Remember you are loved,” the boy says, like he’s talking to an idiot. Then, head tilted as he studies him again, the boy backs away, into that pool of light.  
  
As if a switch was flipped, the light winks out and silvery moonlight gleams down into the alley. It’s empty now. But not cold. Not brutal.   
  
He stands and looks at the star-filled sky overhead and feels like a thousand pound weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

 


End file.
